Linux Blog

Ok, I’ll admit it; I’m a digital hoarder. I’ve had this problem for a while where I can’t seem to delete stuff. Perhaps its files I’ve created, stuff I’ve downloaded, backups, or backups of backups but files seem to accumulate faster than I can keep up with organizing them. Throw this on top of system re-installs and, being the family geek backups of family members and freelance work to be honest, I’m a bit overwhelmed!

Well, it stops today! At least the start of organization that is. I’ve written in the past about spring cleaning tools, recursive md5sum scripts and tools like md5deep but nothing really came of it. It’s time to take action and get stuff organized. Now I’ve admitted it publicly, I’m sort of obligated to get in control of my digital life and so the voyage begins.

Stay tuned for more posts on digital organization techniques and tools!

Below, I review CVS, Subversion, and GIT; three popular open source version control systems. Version control systems are an organizational necessity for any software development project. During the software development process, multiple developers are often working with varying versions of the same code. One version may have a particular bug, while another version may have a particular feature. Essentially, a development team begins developing code, creating the first version. From that original trunk, there are various branches where the same versions of the code may be worked on at the same time, perhaps one team working on one particular bug, while another team works on a different one. Once changes are made, they are then committed back to the repository, the repository being where all past and current versions of the code is kept. Keeping track of which version has what is an incredibly important part of the process that allows developers to track bugs, implement new features, and keep the project moving forward. (Read on …)

At an average of around $20 per DVD* most can’t afford to have any of their DVDs lost, stolen or broken. Backing them up is a touchy subject depending on who you talk to, but here is how to do it anyway.

Backing up a DVD on Linux used to be much harder than it is with K9Copy. No more flaky DVD Shrink crashes under wine. K9Copy takes the hassles out of creating backups of your DVDs under Linux. As the name implies it is KDE software but works well under gnome provided you have the needed libraries installed.

It has many options to backup and really is pretty comparable in functionality to the infamous DVD Shrink for Windows. Take a look at the screenshots and give it a try yourself: